


The Lilywhite over Your Heart

by Anonymous



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Footy Secret Santa, Gen, Tottenham Hotspur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-02-27 07:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2684213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gareth wakes up as a Tottenham Hotspur player, again.<br/>(Also a what-if-Levy-isn't-so-skint musing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lilywhite over Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyitsk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyitsk/gifts).



> Gift exchange for kfunk22 @lj. I hope you like it! Thanks higuains @lj for beta-ing this!

The first thing that Gareth noticed was an unbearable headache.

He opened his eyes, and his sight was attacked by a blinding light. Involuntarily, Gareth groaned.

"Honey?" he heard a female voice beside him. "Ssh, honey, the doctor will be here soon."

The Welshman blinked a few times, and finally could see a bit clearer. "Emma? What... What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Emma put her hand on his forehead. "Danny kicked a ball into your head in training, and you passed out. You were taken to the hospital."

"Dani?" he asked. It was strange because he didn't remember training with Dani, as the Spaniard had been out because of an injury for the last few days. He wondered if he got a concussion.

"Danny Rose, honey. Do you... Remember him?" Emma asked, sensing that something was amiss. Gareth tried to remember. The information sprung hazily into his brain. "Danny Rose... Isn't he from Spurs?"

"Honey?" Gareth could hear the worry in Emma's voice, but before he could ask her, the doctor came in.

Gareth realized that the doctor didn't look Spanish, which was a bit weird because the few times he went to the hospital in Madrid, all the staff were Spanish.

"Mr. Bale," the doctor smiled. "How are you feeling?" the doctor asked as he checked Gareth's pulse.

"My head hurts..." Gareth answered.

"Okay. You have been out for a few hours. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Uh... I was having dinner with my teammates... Cristiano couldn't stop talking about Guillem Ballague being an idiot, James kept agreeing with whatever Cris was saying and Marcelo ate five pieces of cheesecake.

Emma gasped and Gareth wondered what was so surprising about Marcelo's dessert choice.

xoxo

After a confusing conversation, Gareth found out that he was never a Real Madrid player, and that he was still playing for Tottenham Hotspur. The date was still April 2015, so his brain has been messing with him by replacing the last two years of his life with a completely false memory.

Gareth closed his eyes as he tried to sleep.

That Champions League trophy felt so real, though.

xoxo

The next day, his headache had disappeared and he felt okay, so the hospital let him go home. With nothing to do, he lounged lazily on the couch and played with Alba. Suddenly, his doorbell rang.

He opened the door and Danny Rose was there, as well as Kyle Walker and Harry Kane.

"I'm so sorry!" Danny blurted out, his face horrified. Gareth didn't know Danny really well since his Spurs memories only extended until 2012, and back then Danny was just a U21 loaned here and there, and Gareth had only heard of his name a few times. He supposed in the last two years he had known the guy better.

"It's alright," Gareth smiled at him. "I feel okay now. The doctor said if I don't get any more headache or nausea I can get back to training in a couple of days."

"Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, G!" Kyle put his arms around Gareth's shoulders. Gareth smiled and hugged him. "If that's the case, I'd rather keep being weak then, thanks."

Behind him, Alba was laughing. Gareth looked back and saw that Harry was playing with her. It felt so strange for Gareth to see, like it was the first time Gareth had seen them, while, seeing how familiar Alba was with Harry, this was probably a regular occurrence.

"So did you see your life flash behind your eyes?" Harry asked.

"No... But something did happen."

All the eyes in the room fixated on him.

"I lost the last two years of my memories. And my brain kind of replaced it with false memories of me being a Real Madrid player. Really, I thought... I'm certain that last week I was still training in Madrid!"

"What?" Danny gasped.

"So... You don't have any memories of what happened for the last two years at all? Do you remember playing with me and Danny?" Harry asked again.

Gareth shook his head.

"The strange thing is, I can remember clearly playing with Ronaldo, Casillas, Di Maria... Everything feels so weird."

"What did the doctor say?" Kyle asked.

"They said it's not uncommon for someone to have memory loss after a concussion, but they also said it's uncommon for the memories to be replaced entirely with new memories. So it doesn't seem really good. But I had a MRI scan and they didn't find anything wrong with my brain, so at least my brain won't be leaking out my nose anytime soon," he shrugged.

"Or, Danny has a memory altering super power!" Kyle looked at Danny seriously, for about three seconds, before bursting into laughter.

“Come on, this is serious, guys,” Harry calmed him down. “Do you think you can still play football, Gareth?”

“Well,” Gareth took Alba’s plastic ball and juggled it with his feet. “I haven’t forgotten how to play, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“This is probably your latent desire for Cristiano Ronaldo acting up,” Kyle grinned. “Remember the friendly with Real Madrid last year? You were all over him like an overeager puppy!”

Gareth didn’t remember the match, but he remembered following Cris around like a puppy in his false memories.

“Or maybe because... It has something to do with... Two years ago. Real Madrid tried their best to buy you. They say the bid was over eighty millions Euro!” Harry said excitedly. “But Levy wouldn’t sell you. He said that, ‘enough of selling our best players! We’re not going to be a feeder club anymore!’ And then he gave us two hours long speech of how we are going to be the best club in the world. Do you remember?”

Gareth shook his head.

“Well good for you, that speech was really boring I nearly fell asleep. But the good thing was, after that Levy actually listened to AVB and buy the players he needed.”

“Andre is still here?” Gareth asked. In his memory, Andre had gone to Zenit St. Petersburg. 

“Yeah, of course he is. And now after getting the right players, that high line strategy finally pays off.”

“Did we... ever get into Champions League?” Gareth asked tentatively.

Kyle sighed. “Last year we almost got to it, man. We got the same points with Arsenal, but Alexis Sanchez really helped them with their GD. I don’t know what kind of magic Wenger uses to hang on to the fourth place in the league, really.”

“This year it’s going to be even tighter,” Harry added. “Just a few more games, and the last match, the derby, is at White Hart Lane.”

Gareth was surprised. “North London Derby at the end of the season?”

“Don’t you... oh wait, you don’t remember,” Kyle grinned. “It’s supposed to be in February, but there was a hot air balloon crashing into the stadium the day before the match, so the match was postponed. Then on the match day in March, there was a blizzard – a fucking blizzard in London, in March! It just got postponed again and again that they just chucked it on the last day of the season.”

Gareth tried to take all the information in. It was so difficult, because he felt that the memories of him playing as a Real Madrid player was what really happened.

His teammates hung around a bit more before going home. That night, he surfed the web to cross-check his memories with what actually happened. So Real Madrid did win the Champions League, and the Spurs squad was more or less the same with the one in his dream, but...

One name stood out. 

Joao Moutinho.

He remembered that Andre really wanted that player. Judging by the points that Spurs had gathered, that guy really made an impact on the team.

Gareth smiled.

The false memories still felt too real, and it felt as if he had just returned home after going away for two years. Yet, this made everything feel more exciting for him.

xoxo

Driving to the Hotspur Way was a strange experience. His hands just automatically moved the steering wheel, while his mind already forgot the address of the training ground. To his relief, he got there safely and without getting lost.

“Gareth, my brother!” Ade’s booming voice greeted him. “Good to see you healthy like this.” He hugged Gareth tightly. “But I heard you’ve got amnesia?”

“Yeah, but only for the last two years,” Gareth smiled, enjoying the hug. He felt as if he hadn’t seen his teammates in two years. Other players gathered around him, poking, prodding and asking questions.

“Hey, what are you guys doing? Get on the pitch, quick!” someone shouted from the door. Gareth’s head snapped to the direction of the voice. Without thinking, he started running.

“Andre!” Gareth gave the coach a bone-crushing hug, “I miss you so much!”

Andre just stared at him dumbfounded. “We just met a week ago. So the memory loss is true?”

Gareth let him go. “Yeah, I feel like I haven’t met you in a long time.”

Andre smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll see my face so often you’ll get bored of me by the end of the week! Now go warm up!”

xoxo 

As Gareth suspected, having Moutinho in the team made his life easier. After Luka left, he had nobody to pass to, but now Joao could fill the role. Both in training and in matches, they could easily open up the opponent’s defense, making it easier for Roberto, Ade and Harry to score. They kept winning match after match.

Before he realized it, the end of the season had arrived.

On top of the league table, as usual Manchester City needed to win their match on the final day to be able to win the league. But that wasn’t on Gareth’s mind.

On the fourth place lied Arsenal, while Spurs was two points below them. They needed to win, no matter what.

“They are going to throw everything at us, “Andre said in the dressing room. “Keep your concentration and stick to the plan. We are going to win this match.”

The players walked out to the loud rumble of White Hart Lane.

Gareth remembered the cold metal of the Champions League trophy. He looked at the faces of his teammates, Andre, the coaches, the doctors, the physios, and the fans.

At that moment he knew.

He knew with all his heart, that this was the team, no, the family he wanted to win the Champions League with.

The determination grew inside his heart, and he knew that his teammates felt the same.

The referee blew the whistle. As predicted, it was brutal. Koscielny had pulled every trick in his book to stop Spurs’ line of attack. Nevertheless, Joao made a lovely pass to Roberto, and the Spaniard scored to give them the lead.

The attack went back and forth for the most of the match, until Sanchez beat Kaboul and Lloris to equalize in the 78th minutes. The stadium went into frenzy, and Gareth could barely hear anything. On the sideline, Andre and Steffen were going crazy, shooting orders with full body gestures.

But suddenly, Gareth saw a gap.

He dashed and ran until his lungs felt like bursting. Monreal tried to tackle him, but he kicked the ball forward and jumped over the tackle. There was only Szczesny left, and instinctively, he kicked with all his might.

Szczesny managed to touch the ball, but it shot right pass him into the net.

Before he knew what happened, he was tackled to the ground, his teammates laughing and hugging him. They scored a goal, in the 89th minute.

The next few minutes were spent cramming into their own half, but it didn’t matter. When the whistle was blown, the stadium erupted into cheers of happiness.

Gareth remembered how he felt in his memory where he won the Champions League with Real Madrid.

Hugging his teammates, he told himself that he was going to feel it again.

For real this time.


End file.
